I don’t know if this is a Broker message or a technical trading question. I’m trading on Oanda and I keep noticing that the candles will move right past my Take Profit orders. Occasionally it will actually close when it is supposed to but most of the time it doesn’t trigger only to go back down and hit my stop loss which works every time.
Your input?
Hi,
I find your posts very interesting - restful APIs and the like. The candlesticks shown on most broker feeds may represent the bid price or the offer price. You would need to check with each broker, but I think they represent the offer price. So if you observe the instantaneous price on a long go above the take profit price, you need to factor in the spread. Whilst spreads on high volume trades tend to be tight (one or two PIPs) spread on lesser popular pairs, commodities, stocks can widen hugely, so you have the illusion that the broker is somehow cheating. As an example, I have a few very low value Crypto holdings, and I typically put in limit orders. I have watched the spread move out from the equivalent of 0.5% to 10% within minutes. This is one of more real market actions that give rise to the phenomenon you observe. The other may be associated with how the broker makes up their total commission on a trade. Does this help in any way?
Yes in fact you named it. I finally contacted Oanda to ensure something wasn’t wrong. I was taking into account the spread, however, I was not taking into account that the long positions close on the Bid and the short positions close on the Ask. The chart I was looking at was their default chart and I wasn’t taking that into account. Since I’m writing my own software to utilize their API it would give me a similar indication. Basically I had the bid and ask backwards. Once it was switched I could then watch the trade as it was open and once the TP or the SL was touched it would trigger a close exactly where it should. Once again user error or programmer error.
I think in many cases people will immediately point fingers and blame the broker for being up to something shady and I’m sure that does happen. I was nearly certain that was not the case with Oanda being such a large entity.
Thanks for the reply.
Scott
Great forensic result Scott. So I also learned from your question. Longs close candles on Bid price and Shorts close candles on the Ask price. I think that is worth writing down somewhere. I can also imagine a scenario where there is big volume at your TP price, and your exit may not get filled. If you want to exit and there is a whale there who also wants to exit it is likely he gets filled before the minnows. Maybe even at a slightly better price than he was bidding.
Yes that is good information that new people (like me) need to be aware of. Seeing my orders go past the take profit was really bothering me. I was looking at it in numbers but once I noticed the problem I opened up the charts on Oanda’s site only to see the same thing. The charts can be re-configured to show the correct results but the person (me) would need to know that up front. Thankfully Oanda has great customer support and once I made contact only took 30 seconds for them to tell me what was going on. Once I switched Bid/Ask in my software code the trades started closing out exactly where they should.
So far I’m only in testing on the practice account and have not experienced that whale. I understand how the whale could push me past my stop loss and make me take a larger loss but I sure hope the same is true for take profit. If he opposite whale pushes me up past my take profit I sure hope to benefit from that. I’m only the left fin of the minnow so far.
Here is a peek at my screen. You can see I’m old school and prefer the numbers 
Mondeoman, here is a little quote I found that is very helpful. It was worth printing and sticking on the wall beside the terminal
Thanks for this. Yes it is very important. I have a large noticeboard on the wall in front of my home/office desk, which is filled with such things held on with magnetic stickers. A quick look right now:
The Mood Elevator
Wall St Cheat Sheet - Psychology of a Market Cycle
Cryptos - this month’s token holding as a % of total fiat value invested in Crypto
Pictures of my wife 30 years ago
D.I.Y Investing Discord screen dump of BTC price action since 2018
When I get bored in teleconferences, I shift my depth of focus (making sure the camera is off) and look at these “important influencers” that help my concentration reset after a “microsleep” dose of those things important in my life right now.
